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Monday, October 26, 2015

And so it begins...

Whoa what a day! It started out pretty well and then had a few ups and downs and scary parts. After we awoke this morning, showers were taken, coffee drank, breakfast eaten, we then began to pack the truck for the 3rd time. We had already taken over two loads on Saturday. This adventure is starting a bit differently than the ones we had taken on the Lady J. I literally had a day and a half to put everything we needed together, packed and brought to the trailer, unloaded and put away. Now needless to say I have had a little experience in doing this, but in the past it has taken place over a couple of months not 24 hours. But we made it to the trailer by 9:15 a.m. and by 9:30 we had it all hooked up and ready to move, not too bad for our first time.

Every good journey starts with a good cup of coffee.

Hooking up the camper to the truck

Starting our way down Route 23

Across the bridge in Portsmouth

We traveled down Route 23 from Columbus to the river, crossed over to Kentucky, took a by pass around Ashland on Interstate 64 then over to Interstate 77. The ride was beautiful. Today had to have been peak season for the fall foliage, it was breathtaking.

A Factory

I actually took my turn behind the wheel today. I must admit I was a bit apprehensive about the idea of driving something so HUGE, LONG, UNNERVING. But Mike has a good way of pushing me to do things that are out of my so called comfort zone. And like always it really wasn't as hard as I had expected. I drove for about an hour, didn't run into anything, cut anyone off, run anyone off the road. It wasn't as difficult as I had expected, but I still need to get the hang of figuring out where the back end is. Note: we now use roadside rests much more often and now have to park with the big guys, we don't fit anywhere else.

Parking with the big boys

Even though it was overcast most of the day the clouds were just perfect.

Downtown Charleston, WV

It was hard to keep your eyes on the road with all this fall color surrounding you.

Now for the scary part. Once we were on Interstate 77 South we decided to plug in the GPS. I had updated it just before we left. We call her Gabby, the GPS that is. Yes we do have a tendency to name things, but anyway. She told us to get off at exit 30 and follow this road, well about 3 minutes on this road and we had this really horrible feeling we were screwed! As you can see from the pictures below the road is VERY narrow and VERY curvy. Our first clue should have been the sign when we first entered road where it said "this road is not meant for large trucks". Guess what? We soon realized we are now one of those big trucks. Now the problem was, other than the narrow, curvy road there was no place to turn around. You can't just turn this thing in a patch of dirt, okay maybe a LARGE patch of dirt. We drove for about 5 miles till we found a church that had a small parking lot. It was worth a shot, the only problem is the lot was surrounded by a fence. Well let's just say after we put our "mark" on the trailer this wasn't going to work. So we continued on down the road. About another 5 miles or so we finally found this place that held their emergency vehicles. The driveway was large enough that Mike could maneuver the trailer around and get us heading back out to the interstate. Can I just say he did an amazing job getting us out of this predicament. Needless to say I was sitting in the passenger seat white knuckling it all the way.

Well after that harrowing experience we took to the directions on the pamphlet we had picked up earlier about the campsite. This got us right into the camping area without any problem. Oh and as a side note, Mike was talking with the lady at the campground about that road we were on and she said that was an old logging road and that GPS systems seem to want to take folks this way. Well guess what no more GPS for us, Mike just about threw Gabby out the window after this experience. We are going back to a good old Atlas. Maps are our friends.

Can you see what was looking back at me?

Upon entering the campsite we were surrounded by all types of deer. Its hard to see this little one in the brush but they were just right outside the truck window. The campsite here is really nice. We were finally all set up by about 6:30 p.m. It had been a long day and on top of that we have somehow lost one of the sets of keys to the camper. Luckily we have two sets. Looks like trip to the hardware store is in our future on Monday.

After I fixed us a little dinner and finished putting things away Mike went out and scavenged some wood and built a fire. The man loves playing with fire. I decided to try my hand at a little night time photography. (definitely have to work on that more)